March 20, 2008

My baby cardinal fish are getting really big now. They have been eating brine shrimp for a while. I was very surprised when a baby took an adult brine shrimp when they were not even three weeks old. Back on February 28th, an adult brine shrimp got into the fry tank accidentally. I was watching to see if the babies recognize an adult brine shrimp when one of them came and took it into his mouth. His mouth was stuffed with the brine shrimp and the tail of the brine shrimp was wiggling out of his mouth. The baby managed to eat the brine shrimp, sucking the tail up like spaghetii. Since then I have been feeding adult brine shrimp to them in addition to frozen Cyclopeeze.

January 30, 2008

Frags I got in Nashville Frag Swap are now on my frag tray in my 120 gallon display tank. I moved them to my display tank on January 24th after observing them in my quarantine tank for about 4 days. They are brightly colored and seem to be free of parasites.

They stayed on the tray until I finally found spots in my already crowded tank this past Sunday. One acroporaSTN’d this morning. The rest of the frags are all doing very well.

January 26, 2008

My husband Reilly and I visited Middle Tennessee Reef Club’s 4th annual Nashville Frag Swap on January 19th. The frag swap was quite a success. There were so many people there trading, selling, and buying coral frags and supplies. I saw a number of members from North Alabama Reef Club (NARC) that I belong to and others whom I came to know through the past frag swaps. It was great to see all these familiar faces. Needless to say it was fun meeting some new people, too.

Here are some pictures from the swap. I don’t know how many people attended the meeting, but it was rather crowded as you can tell from the picture.

Here’s Harry from NARC with a bunch of frags for sale.

People were busy checking out the frags for sale.

I had a number of them for sale as well. Next to me is Reilly, and next to him is another NARC member Steve (Mariner.)

There were a lot of nice raffle prizes and door prizes, including some yet-to-be-released ORA corals, some high end reef equipment and a complete Red Sea Max set up.

I was lucky enough to win Baensch’s Marine Atlas, $10 gift certificate from a reef store in Nashville area, and a very nice colony of green Ricordiayuma this time.

I also attended the lecture by Dr. Ron Shimek on the state of world’s coral reef. He took us through the evolution process of corals and talked to us about what we hobbyists can do to help preserve them. It was a great presentation. Unfortunately something else started just as his Q&A session started and I had to leave the lecture to attend the next event.

Later in the fragging workshop MTRC members fragged a large leather and a lime green table acropora colony. I was very happy to receive a very nice frag of the table acropora since I wanted to try my hand at a table acropora ever since I saw the pictures of beautiful table acropora colonies growing in a few Japanese reef enthusiasts tanks.

All in all, it was a fun-filled wonderful day. I believe everyone had a great time. I hope the next one in June in Knoxville, TN will be as good as this one.

December 31, 2007

Just like any new electronic gadget nowadays, it has bewilderingly many options. I still don’t know what I am doing, but here are some practice shots.

My zoanthid garden on a frag tray:

Here’s a couple of yellow tail damsels. I added five of them a few weeks ago. They are doing very well. I see them quarreling among themselves here and there, but they are getting along with the rest of the community.